What Monsters Are We
by SniperCT
Summary: Deep in the jungle on the hunt for an artifact, Lara stumbles into the middle of a warzone. Pseudo-sequel to What Binds the Soul and a bridging fic to another story.
1. Monster

_**(Set several years after What Binds The Soul, and about six or seven years after Yamatai. Contains spoilers for WBTS)**_

I wish.

I wish things had been different. That fate had taken a different course for us. Sometimes I wonder what it would have been like if we'd missed Yamatai, if the storm had pushed us back instead of wrecking us on the island. There wouldn't be blood on my hands, or on Sam's. Roth and Alex would be alive, and I could have made my name elsewhere. But wishes are a luxury I simply don't have. I can't allow myself to have them. They're a distraction.

Five years ago I walked off an island a different person than when I started. A few years after that, Sam's hands were bloodied too. We aren't who we were in University, or even who we were after Yamatai.

I suppose I'm bored. 'Normal' archaeology, after Sun Queens and Artifacts, is not quite the same thing. I should feel as though I've earned a dose of normalcy, and yet...here I am in a dense jungle, pinned down by gunfire, caught in the middle of a warzone. I'm only here because of hearsay and old folklore, and the war is unwelcome. I've killed too many people, and yet I keep finding myself in situations where I have to pull a trigger and end a life before mine is taken.

The sound of fighting moves west, away from me, and I take a chance to make a run for it. If my sources are correct, there are old ruins and within those old ruins may lay information that will lead me to the source of those artifacts that caused us so much trouble years ago. Sam hadn't been too happy when I'd expressed interest in finding the source. I'm barely willing to say it by it's _name_ , but Sam was.

 _"You're seriously going to look for Atlantis, the city that was swallowed up by some big black hole monster?" She'd said, gesticulating wildly as if trying to emphasize her point._

 _"It's just a lead, I can spend a week and then fly to meet you in Paris." I tried to give her my best pouty expression._

 _She'd just shook her head. "I'm more than happy to pass this time, since you're bribing me with Paris, but if you're late, so help me Lara Croft I'm coming down and dragging you back by your hair."_

I definitely can't afford to be late now. I can't put Sam at risk of entering a warzone just because I can't get the memory of the city I'd seen out of my head. Because I need more danger and excitement than a regular dig allows. Keeping low, I move through the foliage slowly. It only seems to get thicker the farther into the jungle I go, but just as it seems as though I might have to turn back, I break into a clearing. A ruin rises up several feet above the ground, but what has my attention is a thrum in the air. The hair on my arms stands on end, and I take the safety off of my pistol.

I haven't felt this sensation in a long time. It's familiar, like slipping into a comfortable jacket. Ever since Shaw died and we'd destroyed the Atlantean artifacts, I'd searched for some of the lesser ones. In my travels, I've found six and destroyed each one. Maybe someday, someone might have found them all and maybe between the hundred or so I believe to exist, they might finish what Shaw started. I can't risk that, though it hurts every time.

"Lets see what was left behind this time."

Most of the temple is buried underground, but I find an entrance by dislodging some stones. Dropping a flare, I gauge the distance, then secure a rope and rappel down. It's damp and dank, the smell of stagnant water and droppings of wild animals greeting my nostrils.

"Ugh.." I don't want to know what I'm stepping in, but I pick up the flare and use it to illuminate my way as I walk through the tunnel. There's splashing in the distance, and the rumble of some animal.

The energy in the air draws me down another tunnel, and it opens out to a half-destroyed chamber. I toss the flare into the center of the chamber, then flick on my torch, hastily checking for any black water. An ancient security system that I'm not in the mood to deal with.

My torch catches a flash of gold and I move towards it. Exposed by some of the rubble is an oblong object, and after I pull it free I hold a golden idol in my hands. My palms buzz, and the dusty metal is warm to the touch. I wrap it in a cloth and stow it in my pack so that I can study the chamber more carefully. I'm not really here for the idol. I'm hoping to find markings or writing. But most of what I'm looking for has been destroyed by time and nature. The only clue that tells me I'm looking in the right place is part a segmented circle, carved into what is left of the dias the idol had stood on. The same symbol from Malta, the Hanging Gardens and Tibet - just about everywhere we'd found an artifact. A sigil of _Atlantis_.

I explore the rest of the temple, taking as many pictures as I can for later study. There's a fascinating history here that's waiting to be uncovered. I'll have to come back when people aren't trying to kill each other over this land.

The rope is secure where I left it, and I make the arduous climb back up and out of the ruins. I'm cautious, but when I peer out, I don't see any soldiers. The fighting is nearby again, and I briefly consider hiding out in the ruins a little while longer, but I reason that I simply don't have enough food and water to wait out what could last for weeks or longer. What I do is put the stones back into place and brush away my foot prints with a frond, before returning to the jungle.

It would take longer, but I opt to try to circle around the fighting and get into a safe zone. I feel a little strange. I'm a British woman walking out of a former colony with one of their treasures. I'm basically continuing a long line of wrongs and it turns my stomach. In other circumstances I'd leave the idol with a museum here, but it regrettably must be destroyed. I'm not sure that thought makes me feel any better about it. After all, what right do I _really_ have?

I hear the crunch of a footstep and the sound of a gun's chamber loading. I can't say which of us fires first, but my aim is better and my attacker lays on the jungle floor gasping for breath as he clings to his assault rifle. I approach cautiously; and my heart leaps into my throat.

He's just a boy. He can't be much younger than Dolma is. Sixteen, in pain and scared, dark eyes dimming quickly as he rattles out his last breath. The world closes up around me and I fall to my knees next to him. He's just a boy. He's just a _child_.

With unsteady hands I touch his face, and close his eyes. My stomach lurches and I empty the contents of my stomach onto a jungle plant. When the first sob threatens to come out, I can't stop it, and I can't stop the rest of them from racking my body. It was too easy, too easy to pull the trigger.

"Oh god, oh god I'm sorry, I'm so sorry! What am...What _am_ I doing?"

What kind of _monster_ am I?


	2. Mental Scars

Not all scars are physical. Sometimes the mark is a deep one left in hidden places of the mind. Scars that wake you up screaming, or make you jump at a shadow in the dark and the sound of thunder.

Most nights, indeed most days, I'm okay. The memories are dulled by distance and tempered by better ones since. But lately….lately I've been jumping at the shadows again. Yamatai weighs down on my again. Costa Rica. Peru. Turkey. Germany. The oil rig. Tibet. All those events, all that time racing Shaw and his men. Killing them. And then the jungle. Something happened there a few months back. Something I haven't been willing to share with Sam.

And that may be the most damning scar of all. Sam is my best friend, my _wife_. The person who understands me better than anyone else, the one person I love more than any other in the world. How can I tell her I killed a boy? It doesn't matter that he was armed, that he was being forced to kill me, and likely others. He was still a child and I put a bullet in him, unthinking, uncaring until the act was done and I'd seen what I wrought.

My dreams are haunted again. Old ghosts I'd thought I'd put down. Dreams of Amanda falling to her death. New ones in the form of that boy. Everywhere I go I leave corpses in my wake.

It was so bad tonight that I found myself in the bathroom, furiously scrubbing my hands to clean blood that isn't there. It's familiar behaviour, from those first six months after Yamatai and I feel like I'm right back at square one. How can I shoulder so much suffering over the seven years since and one event, one little boy can send me back?

I feel a hand on my shoulder, and then arms wrap around me. I lean in, turning my head to look at Sam. Maybe she doesn't quite know what's set me off, but she understands. She's been there nearly every step of the way. She's scrubbed her hands raw sometimes, too. And sometimes, a lot of the time, I wish we'd never found that fucking island. So that Sam wouldn't have this weight. That _I_ wouldn't carry it myself.

"Do you want to talk about it?" She asks me. Her eyes, they've seen too much, and this would be just another burden to add to her shoulders. But she has a way of breaking through my barriers. "Is this about the jungle? I know it had to have been bad, but I'm here for you. We share things, remember? I'm ready to listen, when you're ready to talk."

"There was a boy," I rasp.


End file.
